During this period, Vaughan exhumed at least 10 corpses from St. Nicholas' Churchyard and sold them to surgeons in London for dissection.
[1] In 19th century, the profitable business of bodysnatching, or "resurrectionism," was fueled by the high demand for cadavers for medical dissection, as prior to the Anatomy Act in 1832, the only legal yet insufficient source of human cadavers was the bodies of criminals executed by the officials.
[1] Vaughan was among the few local resurrectionists employed by Sir Astley Cooper, son of the vicar at St. Nicholas' Church and the surgeon for Queen Victoria.
[2] He continued bodysnatching after being released, and a later incident, when he was caught stealing the clothes from the corpses, saw him arrested again in 1831 and transported to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Australia.
Dr Paul Davies, committee member of St Nicholas' Church Preservation Trust commented that without the cadavers medicine "wouldn't have progressed so fast" as "until quite late in the 19th Century people were still relying on the medical theories of the Romans - for nearly 2,000 years".